passion church ucla

"First rule of fight club, you don't tell anyone about Fight Club" Tyler Durden....

Last night we had our little fight club at UCLA. Josh, Caleb and Dave call it "Passion Church" :) I think that's an awesome name for what they got going on. I don't know how to explain it, but I'm excited to see what God is doing through this little band of brothers and sisters. They are seeking God for revival at UCLA, they are asking God for the souls of 40,000 students, they are daring to do the impossible. They are living out the radical Gospel right where they are.

Tues-Wed they held a 30 hour fast for revival at UCLA. Students from different fellowships came to participate at this little apartment across the street from campus. It was packed out as students prayed and worshipped hard in the near dark. I felt like I was in an underground chinese house church. Banning from Bethel Church in Redding flew all the way down just to train and impart to these student radicals on the "supernatural" of God and how the Gospel today must be backed with "power" in order to see God's breaking in of glory on our campuses. amen. I had the opportunity to train also on revival and prophetic evangelism. Something is stirring and it smells like revival at UCLA :)

During the prophetic activation training Banning prophesied over Josh that he saw a "mushroom pizza" when praying for him. Josh then replied, "You know we are having pizza night for our vision night tomorrow" ....vision nite is the introduction meeting to their new campus church plant "Passion Church" at UCLA. It gets more interesting.

The day of the vision nite, Caleb, Josh and Dave pretty much didn't give out many flyers and so we just prayed and really were not expecting anyone to come out to the vision meeting. Low and behold two random girls come to the meeting (they are freshmen) one girl says, "we came because we found your flyer and for some reason we came because it said free pizza!" Josh brought in two
ordered pizzas (one mushroom and the other hawaiin) turns out these were the favorite kinds of pizza for these two freshmen gals.....hmmm...God or odd?

so there we were, having prophetic pizza, with two random new friends and Caleb, Josh, Dave, Alyson, Tina, Jumpei, Matt, Mike
and myself. With nothing planned for the gathering, we just start sharing childhood funny stories. Which turned into 1 hour of sharing hilarious "pee and pooh" stories from our childhood pasts. It was hilarious. Not the most spiritual thing to do. It gets better, later Tina walks out the lounge and God leads her randomly to pray for a student in the dorm hall who is playing guitar, we end up praying for him together. Later Caleb, Dave and Josh share their heart about Passion Church, wat its about, its passion for Jesus, for authentic community, for reaching every lost student on campus and its passion for social justice and mission in the world. It was lovely, it was all unplanned, and all led by the Holy Spirit. These two freshmen girls were just hangn with a crew of radical Jesus lovers gathering together to love and obey Jesus. It was cool, we were having church in the dorm. We told some more funny stories, then prayed for revival a little more, prayed for one of the two freshmen gals, and one started crying, I guess Holy Spirit was either touching her or her contacts were bothering her eyes :P watever the case, Holy Spirit had His way. I forgot to mention while we were sitting in the dorm lounged walking towards the elevator was, "Wait I know that girl, Audra? from the Cause? nooooo way!" Yes way, on the same floor we were having dorm church was Audra from The Cause (one of the gals who prayed with me and hundreds of others for 50 days in Colorado to end abortion). What is the chances of Audra (a nazarite radical) chancing upon our dorm church meeting and living on the same floor having only moved into UCLA a day before and is looking for some like minded radical Jesus loving believers on campus? Only God, only God.

What am I trying to say? I dunno wat i'm trying to say. I'm excited, church is so simple, who ever thought you could have church in a dorm, eating pizza, laughing your butt off, while praying for revival and seeing a prophetic mushroom pizza prophecy happen right before your eyes? The kingdom is meant to be lived out with joy and with violence. Meaning, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force (Matt 11)

This is the mandate. To love and obey Jesus, whenever, wherever, with whoever. It's kingdom, its bringing church to where life happens everyday. Thursday night, that was in a dorm lounge in Reiber Hall 6th floor. It was an unplanned gathering with no agenda but to come together and glorify Jesus as He led us to do His will. The stories get better, but you would have to come to experience it. It's only by experiencing that you will "know"...but are you willing to take the "red pill" and take that risk, to let go of all you knew as church and enter into something completely unknown? The story keeps going....so

Dave then shared how him, caleb and josh decided to watch "Passion of the Christ" in Sproul Hall in the big lounge. Simply cuz they felt like watching it. Next thing you know students all over the dorm start walking by, coming out of their rooms asking, "Hey can we watch with you?" All of sudden the dorm lounge is filling up with random lost students (almost all pre-disciples) watching a film about the suffering passion of the Son of God....church happens again, its so simple, so un-planned, just living out faith where life happens and God is glorified. I told Dave jokingly, "you should start a Passion of the Christ cult and watch it every week in the dorms and tell them if they want to join....?

"First rule of Passion Church, you don't tell anyone about Passion Church."

(www.passionchurchla.org)

posted by Jaeson Ma @ 10/01/2005 12:09:00 AM